Two lakh Gram Panchayats (GPs) out of 2.69 lakh GPs under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has been brought under the Geographical Information System (GIS).
The Ministry of Rural Development today said this was an important milestone reached with the help of remote sensing technology based on the “ridge to valley” approach.
The GIS-based planning is an initiative of the Rural Development Ministry which helps the Gram Panchayats to ensure a scientific & holistic approach for planning at the Gram Panchayat level.
The GIS is a computer-based tool for mapping and analyzing the geographic terrain and offers scientific choices of development works suitable to the area.
This technology integrates common database operations such as query and statistical analysis with the unique visualization and geographic analysis benefits offered by the maps.
GIS helps participatory planning at the implementation level. The Ministry has provided detailed training on the usage of GIS and Remote Sensing MGNREGA functionaries through the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj.
The Ministry is also working towards integrating climate data with the above data through a joint initiative with FCDO of the UK, known as CRISP-M, which will further enable the local communities to understand the impact of changing climate in terms of various geophysical parameters and make smart decisions on them.
This is initially proposed to be taken up in seven states viz. Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and will be expanded later to all other states as well.